Opening Day is a date fans circle as soon as the schedule is released in the offseason. But if this winter has taught us anything, it’s that Mother Nature doesn’t own a calendar.

Due to the winter that doesn’t want to end, local high school teams have been forced to practice inside gyms. While the start of baseball and softball usually overlap the end of the winter season, this year has been uncharacteristically harsh.

“I’ve never seen it this bad at any level,” said Cohasset baseball coach Pete Afanasiw. “Playing, coaching – anything.”

“Last year it was 70 degrees outside,” said Hanover softball coach Joe Messina. “It was beautiful. We were outside the whole time.”

The spring season officially kicked off this past Monday for local high schools, and the majority of teams haven’t laced up their spikes yet.

“I actually went down to the field on Saturday and it wasn’t perfect, but it was playable,” Messina said. “The ground was a little soft, but we could have at least gotten out to do some things. Then we got more snow.”

Making matters worse for Messina and his Hanover softball team is the fact that the gym is being shared by the baseball team and the boys and girls lacrosse teams as well.

“It’s hard to get much done in a gym to begin with,” he said, “but to only get a limited amount of time makes it tough.”

Afanasiw hasn’t been able to get out and practice on a diamond, but the artificially turfed football field at Cohasset High enabled the Skippers to get outside and work on the basics Monday.

“We could at least get out and take some infield on the turf and catch some fly balls,” said Afanasiw. “It wasn’t perfect, but we could at least take a look at some arms and things like that.”

Practicing indoors certainly has its pitfalls, but both coaches took the time to reinforce the fundamentals.

“We took the time to go over the signs, cutoffs and just the fundamentals,” Messina said. “I wanted to make sure that everyone knew the rules, even the players that have been here. It was a good time to watch some videos and to just go over the fundamentals.”

“There are always some things that you want to save for bad weather days,” Afanasiw said, “but unfortunately that’s all we’ve had.

Fortunately both teams return a lot of experienced players, so there’s not a lot of evaluating to do. Afanasiw has only three positions to fill, and while Hanover has more needs than that, Messina is familiar with the majority of the players trying out – even the freshmen.

Page 2 of 2 - Last year Hanover had only 14 girls try out for softball, so the school was granted a waiver that allowed some eighth-graders to play on the JV team.

“That helps,” Messina said. “Because how can you evaluate somebody in a gym? You can’t.

“We have six seniors coming back this year and they’ve been great. We try to pair up the younger kids with some of the seniors in the drills that we can do. Having the seniors has been helpful.”

More snow on the horizon has already canceled a handful of scrimmages, and may force teams to enter the season without any live game experience.

“That’s never happened,” Afanasiw said. “Usually we can at least get some intrasquad scrimmages in against live pitching. But to do that in a gym would be a terrible idea.

“Everybody is in the same boat, so we’ll just have to do what we can.”